5 Things That Never Happened to Greg Parker
by Ace Bullets
Summary: In-progress. This will eventually be 5 stories of things that never happened to Greg Parker, for better or worse. Enjoy.
1. Bonding

**A/N: Sorry in advance to my readers who don't know NHL hockey. Hope you enjoy, nevertheless. Irony of ironies: When I first wrote this, Toskala was indeed goaltending for the Leafs. Since writing this story, he was _traded_ to the Calgary Flames, the opponents I arbitrarily chose. I'd change the story to say 'Giguere' instead, but won't. Just remember this story takes place prior to the 2009-2010 NHL Season. Thanks.  
**

**5 Things That Never Happened to Greg Parker**

_**Bonding**_

"Did you _see_ that save Toskala made on Iginla's deke at the beginning of the third period? It was awesome!"

"Yeah, I did. Pretty smooth moves. Iginla's one of the best players the Flames have."

"Everybody was saying we didn't stand a chance against them tonight."

"Well, Kiprusoff _and_ Toskala stood on their heads, that's for sure. It's just lucky _we_ got the go-ahead goal so late in the third."

"Do you think the Leafs have a chance of going to the playoffs this year?"

"Oh, I dunno... They've been pretty disappointing last few seasons. Poor finishes; terrible stats..."

"Yeah, I guess. But at least they're better than the _Islanders_!"

"Or Tampa Bay!"

"Yah! Tampa _sucked _last year!"

"Even the Colorado Avalanche had a terrible season... Who knows? Maybe this is the year the Leafs pull up their socks and start playing good hockey again. Tonight was an indication they just might be a contender for the Cup."

"I'm really glad we went to the game tonight."

"Me, too."

"Dad?"

"Yeah, son?"

"I love you."

"Ditto."

* * *

END


	2. One Drink

**A/N: Once again, here is another (non-canonical) story about Greg that, quite apart from not adhering to canon (like I just mentioned) also *never happened*. Due to popular demand, I was thinking about what other stand-alone story I could write that would include Dean. The two words 'one drink' popped into my head, and things took off from there. Enjoy.  
**

**Five Things That Never Happened to Greg Parker**

_**One Drink**_

Constable Greg Parker drove home almost in a daze. His mind was a confused maelstrom of conflicting thoughts, each one battling for a place of primacy and attention. His stomach was in knots and his hands were cold and clammy. For a few uncomfortable moments, he was afraid he might have to pull over to retch. But his saliva glands started working overtime, and Greg swallowed several times and took a couple deep, calming breaths. He rode out the wave of nausea, and sighed in relief when it passed.

It was late – after midnight – when he made it home. He parked the car in the attached garage, and switched off the headlights. Greg sat in the darkness of the car for a good five minutes before getting out, just happy to be home safely. He resolutely got out after realising his next course of action was long overdue, and had to be done _tonight_.

It was now or never. Now was that moment in time when everything hung in the balance, and he was startled that he could see it so clearly, when before he had blindly ignored the facts for so long.

_Get the six-pack you've got in the trunk..._

_Good...now the other two you've got in the mini-fridge in the corner of the garage..._

With the packs of beer carefully balanced in one arm, Greg gingerly reached for his house keys and unlocked the door that led into the coat room. He didn't bother to switch on any lights. No need to disturb his sleeping family. He slipped off his shoes and crept into the kitchen.

The green glow from the microwave's LED display helped him get his bearings. He hadn't realised before now how bright it actually was.

With a snap and a popping sound, Greg opened a can of beer and started emptying the amber liquid into the kitchen sink. In the semi-darkness, he watched the frothy brew disappear down the drain until the can was empty. He set the can down on the counter, and moved on to the rest of the cans in the packs.

When all eighteen were empty, Greg went to the cupboard above the crockery that held all the liquor his wife knew about. He'd tackle the stuff she _didn't_ know about soon enough.

Jack Daniel's. Jägermeister. Jim Beam. Johnny Walker Red. Johnny Walker Blue, too. Greg thought how odd it was that all the brand names for the booze he had usually started with the letter 'J'. He wondered now if he wasn't alone in almost personalizing the alcoholic drinks because they sported real names. It was like a friendship: _I'm gonna have a drink with my buddies, Jim and Johnny._

"Greg, what are you doing?"

Greg nearly jumped out of his skin at the sudden sound of his wife's voice. His hand convulsed around the neck of the bottle of Jack he was holding.

"Nothing," he answered quickly, like a guilty schoolboy caught doing something naughty. But then he checked himself and relaxed. There was no need to feel this way.

She flipped on the kitchen light, and the room was filled with a warm, yellowish light.

Greg shut his eyes tightly, then blinked several times to allow himself time to adjust.

"This doesn't look like 'nothing', Greg."

Greg noticed she was trying really hard to keep a tone of accusation out of her voice. Too often, her criticisms that he was drinking too much, or staying out too late after work and drinking too much, came out sounding shrewish. Really, what was _one lousy drink_ after a long shift? Okay, so maybe more often than not, it turned into more than just one (he had to admit) but he'd come to really hate the sound of her voice at times.

"You're right. It's not 'nothing'," Greg finally responded. He put down the bottle of Jack and rested his hands on the edge of the counter, leaning forward slightly to take the weight off his tired feet. Actually, _everything_ felt tired. His feet, his arms, his shoulders, his eyes, his brain...his heart...

"What is it then?" she asked, wisely staying back and giving him his space.

"Um, I just...I just had a really tough shift...and I came home, and then I, uh...I just realised I had to do _something_..."

_Tough shift._ _Yeah, that's putting it lightly._

They'd been warned in the academy they'd see stuff like what he'd seen tonight, and Greg thought he'd be prepared for it when he encountered it. But _tonight_...he found out this was not the case.

He stood up straighter now and rubbed his eyes, as if to somehow rub out the nightmarish visions of what his brain cells had indelibly recorded.

"Greg..." his wife said plaintively, "if you'd just _talk_ to me..."

At any other time in the past, 'talking' to her was an exercise in futility and frustration. Talking to her was an open invitation for her to list all his faults and shortcomings: How he was failing as a husband; how he was failing as a father...and how if he didn't change, things were only going to get worse.

Her requests to 'talk' had the effect of causing Greg to start thinking that it might be better to stay out later and later, just to avoid her constant nagging altogether. It was really beginning to drive a wedge between them, and their young son, Dean, was starting to notice that Mom and Dad weren't speaking to each other all that much. And when they did, the conversation was hardly ever pleasant.

This time, though, Greg knew that talking to her was the next step in moving onwards and out of his self-made hell-hole that had once _seemed _to be a haven and respite from all the ugliness he'd encounter on a daily basis, but now knew could no longer be.

He turned around slowly to face her. She was dressed in a blue satin dressing gown, tied tightly around her with a sash at the waist. When he looked closer, he saw what she was wearing underneath: one of his old shirts. It was too large for her, of course, but it touched him on a level that hadn't been touched in a long time that she still wanted to feel close to him in some way, even though they'd been so distant as of late.

"We should sit," Greg said, and motioned for her to pull up a stool across from him as he settled into another stool at the island in the middle of the kitchen.

Without another word, she sat, her face showing that she was both sleep-deprived and worried. Greg knew for sure he was responsible for both, and he was sorely sorry for it.

"On tonight's patrol, we responded to a single-vehicle accident," Greg started in a low monotone, trying without success to distance himself from the event.

"When we got there, the car was a total wreck. It was on its hood; the passenger side was all crushed. Paramedics on the scene were treating the driver. Young guy, mid twenties, maybe. They had him on the stretcher; face all mashed up and bloody, neck in a brace. He hadn't been wearing a seatbelt, and he got thrown through the windshield, see?"

Greg's wife gasped, and brought a hand to her mouth.

"But he's alive, anyway," Greg said, "though the paramedics seemed to think he'd done permanent damage to his spine way high up. He's probably never going to walk again, and time will only tell if he'll be able to use his hands."

"My God!"

"He's conscious through all this stuff as he's being placed in the back of the ambulance. And while nobody's told him, the guy knows that his passenger – his wife – is a goner. So he's bawling like a baby, not so much from the pain, because he really can't feel anything due to his spinal injury, but because he knows she's dead, and it's all _his_ fault."

Greg's eyes were starting to water, and he looked down at his hands, not wanting to meet his wife's gaze.

"I'm so sorry, Greg," she said, and he knew she meant it.

"But, see, that's not the worst part," Greg continued, feeling a weight pressing against his chest, "the worst part is what this guy kept repeating, over and over..."

"What was that?"

"He kept saying: '_All I had was one drink! All I had was one drink!_'"

Greg put his head in his hands and wept, silently, until his eyes and jaw and throat ached from the effort of trying to control himself.

Soon he felt his wife's soothing presence. She wrapped her arms around his shaking shoulders and rested her head gently against his.

"Shhh," she whispered. "It's okay...Shhh..."

They remained like that for a long time, until Greg finally drained the well dry.

"Mom? Dad?" a soft voice came from the kitchen entrance.

The pair turned in surprise.

"Dean..." Greg said, his voice coming out like a croak.

"What's wrong?" the child asked, clearly troubled, his face presenting a worried expression of fear and confusion.

"Come," Greg beckoned his son, "nothing's wrong..."

The boy raced to his parents, and they all fell into each other's embrace.

"Nothing's wrong," Greg repeated. "In fact, everything just got better than it's ever been in a long time."

* * *


	3. Truth or Dare

**A/N: After a lengthy hiatus, my 5 Things series is back! This one is funny and sad at the same time, so you can either feel like laughing or feel like crying.**

**5 Things That Never Happened to Greg Parker**

_**Truth or Dare**_

Six members of the Strategic Response Unit's Team One looked on with amusement as Jules Callaghan danced on the conference table, belting out a song at the top of her voice:

"_Oh, Mickey, what a pity, you don't understand, you take me by the heart when you take me by the hand! Oh, Mickey, you're so pretty, can't you understand? It's guys like you, Mickey! Oh, what you do, Mickey, do, Mickey! Don't break my heart, Mickey !!_"

"Hey, you're supposed to make a kissy-face at Spike while you're at it, Jules!" Ed Lane interjected. "It's part of the dare!"

Jules scowled at Ed, but went along with it, turning her gaze to a red-faced Mike 'Spike' Scarlatti while she repeated the chorus to Toni Basil's 80s hit, 'Mickey'.

Sam Braddock, Kevin 'Wordy' Wordsworth, Greg Parker and newcomer to the team, Leah Kearns, struggled to keep from laughing too loudly at Jules' antics and she pranced around and made lovey-dovey faces at Spike.

"I think I'm gonna bust a gut," Sam gasped, as tears trickled down his cheeks.

"You guys are _nuts!_" Leah exclaimed, after Jules had finished.

"I don't know who that was more of an embarrassment for: _me_ or Jules!" Spike declared with a shake of his head.

"Okay, _my_ turn to make someone suffer," Jules said, grinning evilly. "That means _you, _Leah; you're next in line."

"Alright," the rookie said gamely. "Bring it on!"

"Truth or dare?" Jules asked.

"Hmm... _truth_!"

"Okay... since you're new and all, I'll go easy on you: do you – and you have to say who it is if you do – have a crush on anyone in this room?"

Several of the guys groaned and rolled their eyes.

"Aww, what is this? Jr. High school?" Ed griped.

"In _this_ room?" Leah repeated, ignoring the lead sniper. She made a point of fixing her eyes on every member of the team for a few beats before answering.

"In _this_ room!" Jules affirmed.

"Well, the _truth _is... I hate to disappoint you all, but the answer is no," Leah finally answered, but not before making some of her male team mates squirm.

"Ehh, what is it with you ladies always wanting to know these things, anyway?" Ed muttered.

"Hey – no more complaining!" Jules snapped playfully. "I'm not the only 'lady' in the SRU anymore. Your Little Boys Club is going to have get used to it."

"Okay, okay," Leah said laughingly, "that's enough. Besides, it's _my_ turn to 'torture' someone."

"Ooooh," five members of the SRU hooted.

"That means you, Sarge!" Wordy said.

"Better be on your guard, Greg," Ed warned.

Leah chuckled, and focused her attention on Greg. "Truth or dare?" she asked.

"Uh... what the hell," he said after mulling it over. "A Sergeant shouldn't keep any secrets from his team, right? Let's go with truth."

"Truth it is," Leah responded and paused for a beat, considering what she ought to ask. "Okay, since I don't know the answer to this one, and since I don't want you to be pissed off at me because you have the power to make my life miserable, here's a non-embarrassing question: Why did you become a police officer? And you can't give us that tired old '_To Protect and Serve_' line..."

There was silence in the conference room.

Ed shifted uncomfortably. Wordy looked away. Jules exhaled softly. Leah and Sam exchanged surprised and puzzled looks across the table while Spike cleared his throat.

"I, uh... I became a police officer... because..." Greg started slowly, his speech choppy.

"You all right, Sarge?" Leah asked, concerned now that she had made a rookie _faux pas_ and breached some unwritten protocol.

"Even after all this time..." Greg sighed, almost to himself. He stopped and drew a breath sharply through his nose, then resumed. "Uh, see, my favourite cousin... We had just a two-year difference between us, so we were close... Just a lovely, smart, sweet girl... Michelle... She was the bookkeeper for this construction company. Her boss... This really, really rotten, corrupt guy..."

Leah watched the distress on Greg's face, and started regretting what she thought would have been a simple enough question for him to answer.

"We... we didn't know it at the time," Greg went on, "b-but Michelle wanted to blow the whistle on her boss and his corruption. She thought she would be _safe _exposing him by going to the press anonymously... thought the reporter could keep her out of danger by keeping her name out of the story..."

"What happened?" Leah asked softly.

"They found her body." Greg responded flatly. "She'd been strangled. God, it's been almost fifteen years... My uncle and aunt never got over it. After the whole story came out, I applied to the academy. You see, for _two years_ I'd been thinking about becoming a police officer, but hadn't told anybody. I kept putting it off... thinking to myself 'You have all the time in the world. You can do it next year'... Michelle was killed because she didn't feel safe going to the police... and all I could think afterwards was if I hadn't put off my application; if I'd at least been _in the academy_ when she was thinking of reporting her boss, then maybe she would have come to _me_. She would have trusted _me!_"

With that, Greg got up from the table and stalked out of the room.

Leah, abashed, looked on in shock. "I... I had no idea it would be so awful," she said.

"Did you all know that about Sarge?!" Sam asked his team mates.

They all more or less nodded that yes, they had known. "Well, thanks for keeping me and Kearns in the dark," Sam snapped.

"Maybe somebody should go after him -" Leah said, rising from her chair.

"Don't you dare!" Five voices cried out in unison.

**END**


End file.
